He had to drag many of the diehard Jam fans with him to The Style Council (many of whom were blindsided by Weller’s understandable desire to move on) and those who came with him were repeatedly assaulted by changes in direction. Throughout his career, through the national treasure days of The Jam, through the European youth club Style Council period and throughout his peripatetic 30-year solo career, Weller has kept a keen eye on the entertainer/consumer relationship, always mindful of becoming too top-down and never forgetting he owes his success to the patronage of others.Ĭonversely, he has seemingly gone out of his way to persistently challenge them, in the way that great artists often do, be they Bob Dylan, David Bowie or Weller’s own North Star, The Beatles. Weller was keen to level the field between performer and audience and his newfound fans were keen to adopt a group they felt were “one of their own”. When Paul Weller’s teenage band started having success, in the heady days of punk – and when their signature tune at the time was still called “In The City There’s A Thousand Things I Want To Say To You” (which is how Weller introduced “In The City” the first time I saw them, at the Nag’s Head in High Wycombe, in early 1977) – they were very much a people’s band. In a way it was a similar thing with The Jam. ‘We’re the stars and you can entertain us for a while, if you behave yourselves.’ That was the tone of it.“ “There was none of that sense of entitlement that The Kinks or the Stones or The Beatles appeared to have,” said Townshend, “which was, ‘We’re the stars, you’re the audience.’ It was the other way round.
The audience “gave their consent and allowed The Who to occupy the stage and perform for them”, said journalist Peter Stanfield in his book A Band With Built-In Hate: The Who From Pop Art To Punk. In the early days of The Who, back in the mid-1960s, the band’s guitarist and principal songwriter, Pete Townshend, realised it was the audience who were in charge, not the band. Paul Weller in conversation with Mary McCartney: ‘We used to pinch a lot of Beatles songs’ Aus dem GQ magazine von Anfang des Jahres:
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